After two weeks of nonstop work, I decided to spend my day off logging what I did. Not because it was special, but because I wanted to face it honestly — the productivity, the procrastination, the ramen. This is a slice of my life, timestamped and unfiltered.

Keeping Myself Accountable by Logging My Actions

It seems that a lot of my life is documentation. At work, I document my tours with daily reports and expense reports, taking photos and videos. In my personal life, I document and create content around my interests to reflect, learn, and perhaps open some windows of opportunity. I discovered that documenting your life allows for review, further learning, and organizing thoughts. Most important of all, you can keep yourself accountable and honest.

0600 – Snooze

Yesterday, I wrapped up an intense, fourteen-person, two-week tour. When I arrived home, I had enough energy to crawl up into bed(lofted bed) and collapse. Unlike the Ashton Hall Morning Routine meme, I’ll be honest, 0600 is too early for a day off. My updoor neighbors’ morning routine woke me from my restful slumber. The Japanese used to make their walls out of paper. . . they still might by the way sound travels. If you’re more wealthy, you can rent a detached home or an apartment of concrete construction to cut down on noise. . . money seems to solve a lot of problems.

0700 – Waking Up

After getting a little more rest, I made the steps down to my computer and began finishing my tour report, expense report, and uploading copies of receipts. Expense keeping is something I have been forced to do to get reimbursed for tour expenses. Loss aversion is a crazy motivating factor, isn’t it? Expense keeping is something that I should adapt for outside tour guiding life. I think keeping balances of my meal budget, rent, bills, income, and spending should help me to get more financially stable.0

One of the Instagram posts I made that got a decent amount of views was my apathy towards the stock market. Thankfully, I don’t have any stocks yet, but honestly, it should have been bad news. I would like to become financially stable enough to invest my finances and have my excess capital work for me. Instead, I find myself working for money.

0900 – Blog Post Writing

I really wanted to finish a blog post I had started before the intense tour. The write-up about my night out with a cousin and a friend had been sitting in my drafts for almost three weeks at this point. A majority of it was already on the page so it was just tweaking for readability, typos, flow, and clarity. I find that when you have time away from your own work it’s easier to edit, review, and change fairly. Do this too close to a moment and you’ll be too attached to the work. Sometimes, it’s best to learn from Zen Buddhism and let go.

1230 – Shower and Day Prep

After working hard, I wanted to relieve the minor amounts of stress by taking a shower. Because my frail human body is afflicted with atopic dermatitis, it’s also my opportunity to put on medicines and lotions. Eczema is one of those things you’ll always be conscious about. The genetic disease plays a role in shaping my negative outlook on life. It’s also one of the reasons I wouldn’t mind becoming a cyborg cat girl. Life both giveth and taketh away.

1300 – Paying Bills And Eating

Paying bills and practical matters. I managed to touch some grass. . .and not the good kind. After leaving my house, I found that another thing was leaving me. My hard-earned cash was evaporating out of my wallet. It felt bad to spend my tip money on essentials like gas bills, electricity, and parking rent. Weren’t tips meant for fun things like PC components, car building, or camera stuff? Instead, I was paying for something I thought should be a free public service by now.

After paying my bills, I grabbed a bite to eat at my favorite low-cost restaurant nearby.

1430 – Laundry and Washing

You’ll have just enough time to do the washing only to do it all over again.

Guest

I was talking about my schedule with my last group of guests. That quote from one of them was really hitting home now. As they said, I felt half of my “day off” today would be spent taking care of domestic chores. I took the time to wash my clothes from the tour. At least because it was a nearly 2-week tour, I could expense my coin laundry. I sat board at the laundry. While the laundromat is a boring place, we can make it fun with our imagination. In the clip below, the fictional League of Legends character Ahri, one of my favorites, washes her laundry at a laundromat. League of Legends is doing a great job of expanding its IP into different universes, games, and media. While it is unrealistic for a POP star do their laundry at a laundromat, it makes for a fun backdrop.

I should take the time to make use of my 3D modeling skills to make “boring” objects like washing machines, laundry carts, and detergent bottles. One day I’ll need to take a step towards pursuing that animation school dream. Although I fear the presence of generative AI in creative work, why doesn’t generative AI do my laundry or help me to organize my house? It’s only become really good at replacing me for entry level art, writing, and editor jobs.

1545 Youtube Video

I don’t mean to contribute to the “content slop,” but after a month and a half of touring, I wanted to express some things in my latest YouTube video. Creative content production is something I want to maintain as a part of my life moving forward. Not that this VLOG is “creative content” in any way, but the vlog is mainly to help me get my ideas out in video form. It’s not edited, nor does it have any structure, it’s merely a rambling of thoughts and ideas. Twenty years ago, a YouTube channel like this might have done well, but now you need a strategy, flashy cuts, camera movement, and, most importantly,y a script to have a video retain someone’s attention.

As I move forward, I will probably start to script my videos, which leads to more time till the shoot. That small barrier might allow my mental blocks to prevent me from wanting to start shooting int the first place. The easiest way to get around this barrier is to simply create more. I’ve wrestled a lot with what I want my channel to be. Cinematic vlogs when I travel, talking head raw real emotions, or should they be scripted flashy videos? Does scripting my videos remove some of the authenticity, or does it convey my ideas more clearly and concisely while being more entertaining?

Part of my disgust with the modern internet is the crazily crafted and fake feeling images we put out to the world. My fear is if I scripted my videos I would be doing the same thing.

1700 Entertainment Break

I took the time to watch a couple of YouTube videos. In the back of my mind, there’s a voice telling me that I should always look to be productive, but there is only so much productivity to be done. Towards the end of the day, it’s easy to start feeling exhausted and like you’re not getting anywhere. Taking small breaks here and there can help with your concentration later on. . .you just have to be careful of when those 20-minute breaks turn into two-hour ones.

I’ve been watching a lot of Asmongold’s videos. His humor, vocabulary, and worldview are very similar to mine. His dry humor, authenticity, and ability to not take himself so seriously make it refreshing in a world of carefully tailored personas. Lately, he’s been going into politics instead of gaming, but I don’t mind that. I thought about how I can read and keep up with patch notes in video games and love to know what’s happening in fictional worlds. Contrarily, I used to care less about what the patch notes of reality were.

1900 – Dinner Ramen

Despite being aware that I could slip into this, I found myself at two hours later wondering where the time had gone. I walked to my local ramen shop for dipping noodles and gyoza, followed by a stop at 7-Eleven. Redbull, a smoothie, tea, and water. . . really I’m just a child with extra money, I thought, looking at my handbasket.

At the ramen restaurant, I ended up putting some drunken crayon drawings I had made at bar Not Suspicious during my tour. It ended up looking a lot like a scrapbook. While not technically my best drawings I’ve produced as I got into the flow of drawing with crayons of all things, I found that that inner judgment stopped. The expectations, labels, and “I’m an artist” persona died, and I was a child creating. I had clawed back some of the ability to express myself.

“Who Am I?”

“What do I want to express?”

Although it was written in plain English, I thought of those two questions I still don’t have the answer to.

2100 – YouTube Watching Session 2

Part of me feels that watching YouTube is beneficial because I get to know what’s going on in the world. I’ve realized now that I should care a little less about what is happening with “other people” and consume some fiction work. A large majority of my childhood was spent watching films with my parents. Our own creative inspirations come from experiencing fictional, fantastical worlds. Whether it is in the form of a Movie, Anime, Film, or Immersive story-based game, I want to make time for fiction again. I always think “I don’t have time” when I end up extending my YouTube sessions to hours at a time.

2200 – Laidback Log

This is where we get to logging my actions. Benjamin Franklin was a notable example of someone who meticulously logged his day. I don’t want to be anyone that important, but it can’t hurt to take some small steps towards my goal. What happened to productivity tools like Asana?? I really need to start making use of them again.

2300 – Laidback Learning

I meant to watch some tutorials or try to learn a new skill. Instead, I ended up learning about the creases of my pillow with my face. As I grow older, the energy I once had is leaving my body. . . god, do I want to do this for another 20 years? I’m looking forward to dying in my 50s in a crazy rally accident. If I want out of this rut, I have to build something. Learn something. Make something.

But tonight? I slept.

Closing Thoughts

Maybe today didn’t feel productive in the traditional sense. But I showed up. I logged in. In MMOs they call it the grind, a small walk towards my dreams and goals.

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